NSSDC is the permanent archive for NASA space science mission data: astronomy and astrophysics, solar and space plasma physics, and planetary and lunar science. As permanent archive, NSSDC teams with NASA's discipline-specific space science "active archives" which provide access to data to researchers and to the general public. NSSDC also serves as NASA's primary active archive for space physics mission data and for selected NASA astrophysics missions. It provides access to several geophysical models and to data from some non-NASA mission data. In addition to supporting active space physics and astrophysics researchers, NSSDC also supports the general public both via several public-interest web-based services (e.g., the Photo Gallery) and via the offline mailing of CD-ROMs, photoprints, and other items. NSSDC provides online information about NASA and non-NASA spacecraft and experiments, and about data management standards and technologies.
Within this use case you learn about motion of the planets both
around the Sun and in the sky, planetary conjunctions and what might
have been the Star of Bethlehem.
Within this use case you learn about Kepler's laws, a cornerstone of
astronomy and a fundamental brick of both Newton's and Einstein's
theories of gravitation. This use case is complemented by use cases 10
and 16 (at different levels of difficulty.
Within this case you learn that stars that seem "fixed" on the sky
may actually move, even if their motion is so slow for the naked eye
to be undetectable. You compare two photographs of the Barnard's Star
taken several years apart and will be able to estimate its
displacement on the sky. Your estimate will be very close to actual
measurements.
